Without a word to Milo, Stiles picked up the receiver of the desk telephone and, after about fifteen minutes, was talking to his party. “James? Jethro, here. Can I have just one more? Gabe Potter, that’s who. Well, isn’t there any way you can get those charges dropped? I really need the fellow, James. Yes, yes, thank you, James, that’s yet another one I owe you. Take care, you old bastard.”
“Master Sergeant Gabe Potter?” Milo yelped, “Jesus, Jethro, he’s the crookedest man at Fort Benning! He’s the last thing we need up here. Moffa and Crockett are bad enough.”
Stiles raised his eyebrows for a moment, then said, “That’s right, Milo, you’ve been away for a while. Well, it’s Captain Potter, now, and since he made captain he’s kept the whole place humming with courts-martial hearings and reductions in rank, with sentences to Leaven worth and stockade time. He was a master crook himself, so he knows every fucking dodge there is, and he’s ferreted out every racketeer in the whole damn training command. Of course, he’s garnered a whole pisspot full of enemies at it, so he just might be glad to get up here into a new unit where he won’t have every other fucker gunning for his ass … well, at least not for a while yet.”
When they all finally straggled in and he got a look at them and their files, Colonel Stiles forced a captaincy back on Master Sergeant John Saxon, ignoring his loud and profanely voiced objections and opinions of officers in general. Then the old soldier was made the battalion adjutant.
Affairs in both battalions and the higher echelons were well on the way to normalcy when Milo was called to battalion headquarters one day. He found Stiles waiting for him outside the building, beside a jeep.
When he had returned the salute, he said, “Get in and drive, Milo. They raise pure fucking hell if I drive myself anymore, even in my own car. Drive somewhere out in the boondocks. We two need to talk, and I don’t want half the fucking division hearing us.”
When once they were off the built-up portions of the post and rolling along a dusty dirt road between brushy shoulders backed by stands of pine and scrub cedar, Stiles spoke again.
“Milo, there’s something godawful fishy going on. I’ve twice tried to get you a commission, now, and each time the forms have been returned, rejected by higher authority, nor have I been able to wangle or worm out any explanation for any of this. Tve run into a brick wall every time, and that’s not my usual batting average in dealing with the Army. They won’t even accept an application in your name for OCS, for God’s sake, man. Have you got any ideas why?”
Milo was nonplussed and said so, whereupon Stiles continued his monologue. “Well, maybe we’ll get to the bottom of it all in time. At last, we’ll have a bit more of that commodity. Inside information I’ve acquired— and this is strictly not for repetition, Milo—has it that, what with all the fuckups we’ve had to put up with, we’ve been replaced by a more combat-ready division for the Italian business. They’re going to give us more time to shake down and form up, see, save us for the big invasion, probably early next year. Somewhere in France, obviously, the Mediterranean coast, I’d guess, considering how well fortified the Krauts have made the Atlantic coasts and how assuredly costly an assault on those coasts would be certain to be.
“I own a villa in Nice, you know. Of course, I’ve not been there in almost twenty years, but until the war started I still received regular rents on it. It would be good to see it again, if we wind up anywhere near it.
“But that’s all in the future and a bit speculative, at best. Look, Milo, I’m going up to Washington for a week or so next month on some business for the general. I’d intended to spend a bit of time out at the farm, and Martine wants me to bring you, too. Can you get away from the company that long, do you think?”
The slow, unhurried and quiet pace of life in the Virginia countryside was very restful, soothing, after the frenetic months of trying to whip nearly nine hundred strangers into a tight-knit unit, with every new disaster and shortfall landing squarely atop the last.
Jethro left early each morning for Washington and sometimes did not return until well after dark, usually too tired to do much other than eat lightly, have a few drinks, bathe and go to sleep in preparation for the next day. During his absences, Milo and Martine spent the days riding or walking the length and breadth of the thousand-plus acres of the farm, joining the children in playing with a litter of puppies, talking about anything and nothing in a half-dozen languages and otherwise lazing away the long days in trivialities.
Melusine Stiles had been just over six weeks old upon Milo’s arrival with her father. Having no milk this time, and not caring to try the bottle method, Martine had sought out and hired a wet nurse for her newest child. However, she still spent time with the baby as well as with her two older children, and during these times, Milo, ever voracious for knowledge, always hoping against hope that some passage read somewhere would trigger his dormant memories of the past, made use of the well-selected array of books in the library of the house.
The week stretched into two weeks, then a third, but Jethro assured Milo that he was keeping in regular touch with the battalion as well as regiment and division and that their presence was not crucial to anyone’s well-being. Milo never asked what Jethro was doing in Washington, and Jethro himself seldom volunteered much information, only advising that Milo make the most of his current period of relaxation as there would be no time or opportunity for such soon.
It had been Martine who had steered Milo, early on, to a set of treatises on varying aspects of military science— tactics, strategy, management of military units in the attack, in the defense, on the march, proper utilization of intelligence and a plethora of other subjects; most of these were written in French, but a couple were in German, as well.
“Milo Moray, I am terribly worried for our Jethro,” she had confided to him. “At times, he seems foolishly overconfident in his abilities to command successfully so large numbers of the soldiers, lacking but the barest of training and educations in such matters. Milo Moray, my father is a graduate of Saint-Cyr, as too was his father and my late elder brother, and so I know—even if my husband will not admit to knowledge—just what is required to make a competent commander of a man. With the sole exceptions of the excessively rare military geniuses, years of education, training and experience are necessary.
“Now, my husband is well educated, but it was not a military education he enjoyed, nor is his a true military mind, for even I can consistently best him at chess. He means well, he is very conscientious, as we both know, but in a life-or-death situation that often is not enough, and I have a strong, terrible feeling that he may not come alive back to me from out of this war.
“But I have another deep feeling, too, Milo Moray. That is that you are very possibly one of these near-genius military minds still unsuspected and in hiding. The little Austrian naval officer has known you for long, yes? He has told me that he is of the firm opinion that before you lost your memory, you were at some time a military man, possibly a European cavalry officer, and if true this could account for my intuitions regarding you.
“So, please to read these books, Milo Moray. Even if they do not help you to recall your past, perhaps they will give to you knowledge with which you may help my husband to succeed in his chosen position and return safely to me and to his children.”